Conventionally, to create a letter or mailer one would locally print a document such as letter text or other message on letterhead or a form, insert the document into an envelope, affix postage and enter into a delivery/postal service. This would require having materials on hand such as pre-printed flat paper stock and pre-converted and pre-printed envelopes which become obsolete and require storage, a printing device such as a typewriter or laser printer with related supplies and power, postage, and labor to execute the printing, assembly and posting of the mailer.
Commercial lettershops typically produce letters for clients in larger batches on pre-printed stock with long lead times and little, if any, variation in graphic presentation. Mailer production can be outsourced to a secretarial service, especially for the production of mailers one at a time, however this is still produced on pre-printed stationery which must be inventoried for potential demand.
There is now emerging an industry to create “printing on demand” in order to reduce the need to inventory pre-printed stock and to increase the flexibility of designs for production. Currently, several providers of letter on demand services have emerged such as Zairmail or Postcards.com. These providers either do not use envelopes, simply manufacturing postcards instead, or they use a generic double window envelope to enclose a document and show delivery and return address information. Usually their production systems are not economical in very small batches, especially one unit. If they do provide one unit production it involves “hand work” and is much more costly to produce than with the current invention. The use of a double window envelope conveys little or no graphic information on the carrier envelope and gives the mailer a distinctively limited and “pre-fabricated” look.